ZTE announced its Geek smartphone back in April, and at the time it housed an Intel Clover Trail+ running at 2GHz, but it never confirmed when or where it would go on sale. Time has ticked on, and after at least one false start where the Geek was accidentally leaked, ZTE has had another go at telling us all about it, only this time it’s not got Intel inside, but a Nvidia Tegra 4 processor.
This makes it the world’s first smartphone powered by the new Tegra 4, a chip which also just made its debut inside a tablet, the new Microsoft Surface 2. Nvidia crowed about ZTE being the first manufacturer developing a phone based on the Tegra 4 back in February, so it has been a long time coming.
News of the Geek’s release comes from the Chinese site Weiphone.com, which details the device’s unveiling at a Beijing event, and gives us a rundown of its specification. The Tegra 4 runs at 1.8GHz and is supported by 2GB of RAM, and it retains the same 5-inch display as before, but the resolution has been increased from 720p to 1080p, ensuring it can compete with the big name smartphone/tablet hybrids already on sale.
A 13-megapixel camera sits on the back of the phone, while a 2-megapixel camera is found above the screen, and the operating system is Android 4.2 complete with ZTE’s Mifavor user interface over the top. It’s a heavy little thing at 148 grams, but at least it’s quite slim at 9mm, and the chassis comes in red, white or blue.
It’s good to see the Tegra 4 finally find a home inside a smartphone, but sadly, it doesn’t look like the ZTE U988S Geek will be sold outside of China just yet. This could change in the future though, and we hope it does, as the quoted price of the Geek converts over to about $300 unlocked, making it a bargain.
